Well, most notably, it’s a great way to get lean without going on a crazy diet or cutting your calories down to nothing. In fact, most of the time you'll try to keep your calories the same when you start intermittent fasting. (Most people eat bigger meals during a shorter time frame.) Additionally, intermittent fasting is a good way to keep muscle mass on while getting lean.
The combination of fasting and praying is not a fad or a novelty approach to spiritual discipline. Fasting and praying are not part of a human-engineered method or plan. They are not the means to manipulate a situation or to create a circumstance. Fasting and praying are Bible-based disciplines that are appropriate for all believers of all ages throughout all centuries in all parts of the world.
As fasting has grown in popularity, scientists and nutritionists have developed different methods of the practice. Some, such as Allen, practice time-restricted feeding, like the 20:4 regimen. Some push the approach to 23:1, cramming all their eating into one hour of a 24-hour day. Other approaches space out fasting days throughout the week, such as the 5:2 method — two days of fasting over seven days. Some enthusiasts supplement their practice with dayslong fasts.
Through evolution, the body became very efficient at storing energy and handling situations when no food was available. For many centuries, fasting was probably a normal occurrence for most people, and the body adapted to it. It is estimated that even very thin people can survive for 40 days or more without food. The body has a special mechanism that is initiated when no food is eaten. Fasting is not starvation, but rather the body's burning of stored energy. Starvation occurs when the body no longer has any stored energy and begins using essential tissues such as organs for an energy source. Therapeutic fasts are stopped long before this happens.
On this plan you'll eat clean five days of the week but will not eat anything for two nonconsecutive days of the week. For example, you can fast on Monday and Thursday but eat clean meals on the other days. Food on these five days will look just like the rest of the fasting plans—healthy fats, clean meat sources, vegetables, and some fruit. Keep in mind that this plan is not for beginners, and you should always talk to your doctor before starting any fasting regimen, especially if you are on medication or have a medical condition.
Fasting helps you build a better brain, too. Intermittent fasting increases a protein in your brain called BDNF that researchers have nicknamed “Miracle-Gro for your brain.”[7] BDNF improves learning and memory and can help you forge stronger neural pathways, making your brain run faster and more efficiently, which is especially important as you age.
When it comes to intermittent fasting, there’s no one-size-fits-all. Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting fits all your eating into a 6-hour window, leaving you with an 18-hour-fast each day. This is often called “18:6” fasting. You can also try variations such as the one-meal-a-day method, or fasting every other day. The key is to experiment and listen to your body to see what works best for you. If intermittent fasting causes fatigue or other negative symptoms, try fasting just once or twice a week, and build up from there.
Yom Kippur is considered to be the most important day of the Jewish year-cycle and fasting as a means of repentance is expected of every Jewish man or woman above the age of bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah respectively. This is the only fast day mentioned in the Torah (Leviticus 23:26-32). It is so important to fast on this day, that only those who would be put in mortal danger by fasting are exempt, such as the ill or frail (endangering a life is against a core principle of Judaism). Those that do eat on this day are encouraged to eat as little as possible at a time and to avoid a full meal. For some, fasting on Yom Kippur is considered more important than the prayers of this holy day. If one fasts, even if one is at home in bed, one is considered as having participated in the full religious service.

3. How are your labs? Are measures such as your cholesterol and blood sugar levels moving in the right direction, and all in healthy ranges? Also, many fasting protocols can be low in certain nutrients. Using labs to look at micronutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids and amino acids is essential to ensure that your intake is sufficient.

A man once said to me about fasting, "It seems that when I fast the world seems much more black and white, at least for a period of time. I see right and wrong much more clearly. I see good and bad, blessings and cursings, benefits and negative consequences, what is godly and what is ungodly. I am much more discerning about what lines up with God's commandments and what falls into the category of 'man's commands.'"

Drink Bulletproof Coffee: Skipping breakfast isn’t easy for everyone. If an 18-hour fast sounds daunting, never fear: there’s a hack for that. Instead of skipping breakfast, you replace it with a cup of fatty, satisfying Bulletproof Coffee. This simple hack keeps you in a fasted state and keeps the “hangries” away, while nourishing your body with good fats. Learn more here about boosting your intermittent fasting results with Bulletproof Coffee
Discipline your body through fasting. When you become especially aware of your own sins and weaknesses and your resulting need for God’s grace, consider fasting as a way to learn discipline that will help you grow. If you discipline your body through fasting, your spirit will follow, and you’ll grow closer to God – which will transform you into a more loving and holy person. Routinely schedule one or two days each week to fast. Use the time to respond physically to the reality of a broken world, the presence of sin in your life, and your yearning for more love and holiness. But beware of using fasting as a weapon to battle your body’s appetites. Remember that food isn’t an evil to be battled; it’s a good gift from God that you’re simply choosing to refrain from for a time in order to focus on responding to a sacred moment.
One type of ketone flooding the brain is beta-hydroxybutyrate, or BHB. According to a paper published in February in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, BHB stimulates memory, learning and the cellular housekeeping process of autophagy in mice. BHB also triggers neurons, including those in the hippocampus, a memory center in the brain, to release what’s called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, a protein that is important for learning, memory and improved mood. CR doesn’t generate these levels of ketones because glucose stores are never empty.
Muslims believe that fasting is more than abstaining from food and drink. Fasting also includes abstaining from any falsehood in speech and action, abstaining from any ignorant and indecent speech, and from arguing, fighting, and having lustful thoughts. Therefore, fasting strengthens control of impulses and helps develop good behavior. During the sacred month of Ramadan, believers strive to purify body and soul and increase their taqwa (good deeds and God-consciousness). This purification of body and soul harmonizes the inner and outer spheres of an individual. Muslims aim to improve their body by reducing food intake and maintaining a healthier lifestyle. Overindulgence in food is discouraged and eating only enough to silence the pain of hunger is encouraged. Muslims believe they should be active, tending to all their commitments and never falling short of any duty. On a moral level, believers strive to attain the most virtuous characteristics and apply them to their daily situations. They try to show compassion, generosity and mercy to others, exercise patience, and control their anger. In essence, Muslims are trying to improve what they believe to be good moral character and habits.
Isn’t it interesting that we in the Western world think going for 12 hours w/o water is harmful? Millions do this and it seems w/o much harm. As a person with an autoimmune, this has been really helpful in tracking down the food which really bothers me. The list of have-not is endless and really bums me out BUT at least I know what I can put in my mouth w/o too much harm. 1 out of 3 suffer from some kind of skin issue, most all being traced back to what you put in your mouth. If one doesn’t stop putting stuff in their mouths how would one EVER know?
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^ Harris, Elizabeth J. (7 June 2010). "Violence and Disruption in Society: A Study of the Early Buddhist Texts". Access to Insight. John T. Bullitt. Retrieved 7 June 2011. If you, Rahula, are desirous of doing a deed with the body, you should reflect on the deed with the body, thus: "That deed which I am desirous of doing with the body is a deed of the body that might conduce to the harm of self and that might conduce to the harm of others and that might conduce to the harm of both; this deed of body is unskilled (akusala), its yield is anguish, its result is anguish.
Fasting is not the first dietary approach to excite researchers. Before fasting, there was caloric restriction, or CR. The methods have much in common. Overall, they both drastically reduce energy intake and bring about similar health benefits. They’re like siblings in a way, especially since fasting studies emerged from work on CR. And now, many former CR researchers are exploring fasting, often setting the two against each other in the lab.
What and when you eat during the feeding window also depends on when you work out. On days you exercise, carbs are more important than fat. On rest days, fat intake should be higher. Protein consumption should be fairly high every day, though it will vary based on goals, gender, age, body fat and activity levels. Regardless of your specific program, whole, unprocessed foods should make up the majority of your calorie intake. However, when there isn’t time for a meal, a protein shake or meal replacement bar is acceptable (in moderation).
For example, in the graphic below you would eat dinner on Monday night and then not eat again until Tuesday evening. On Wednesday, however, you would eat all day and then start the 24–hour fasting cycle again after dinner on Wednesday evening. This allows you to get long fast periods on a consistent basis while also eating at least one meal every day of the week.
Although I do not fast like you do (from sunrise to sunset) I do continue to fast not just to maintain my weight but to free the mind and body or the extra weight and burdens that it must carry. You see when your stomach is not full and your mind is not sluggish from trying to digest a heavy meal you start to have more energy think clearer, sleep better and feel better. When you can have this in your life for free why not take it. Some people spend thousands to have access to these feelings when we can experience a little bit of this each week.
1) A soul cleansing. How often we forget that our bodies are the temple of the Lord—especially when deciding what to eat! Fasting is a great time to remember the spiritual connection we have to our physical bodies. Without the toxins we put in our bodies, we not only give our bodies a break from the digestive process, but we also allow our spirits to be detoxed. Fasting is a faith-move, an expectation we have that God will fill us with His Holy Spirit, just as He promised. But as Christ told His disciples, “[N]o one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins." By fasting, we meditate cleanses the soul and makes it new so we can receive the Holy Spirit and become empowered to live for Christ in a new way.
Intermittent fasting is the hottest dieting trend since keto. (Bonus points if you’re keto and intermittently fasting. You can probably fly now!) The gist is that people attempt to lose weight by only eating between certain hours, or they restrict their eating on certain days of the week while allowing themselves to eat normally the rest of the time. That’s the “intermittent” part: Eat regularly most of the time, restrict your eating other times. Then there’s a subset of intermittent fasting known as the 5:2 diet, in which people eat regularly five days of the week and take in a very restricted number of calories on two days.
It may sound really hard at first, but at least eight hours of the 16 is spent sleeping. There's also a lot of downtime between dinner and sleeping that adds up. Just be patient with yourself, and you'll find your body adjusting to this new eating schedule in no time. If you're looking to get started now, what better way than planning what you're going to eat during your eight-hour eating window?
Eating all your meals in an 8-hour window (say, eating between noon and 8PM, and fasting the other 16 hours a day) causes significant weight loss without counting calories.[1] While this type of intermittent fasting causes weight loss no matter what people eat, research shows that people who do it in a healthy manner lose twice as much weight (7% vs. 3% of their body weight) as those who fast while still eating junk. So it’s still important to follow a high-performance diet like the Bulletproof Diet while you fast.

So: The first two weeks of intermittent fasting will suck. “Like anything else, fasting becomes easier the more you do it,” Fung says. You’ll likely experience side effects (lack of concentration, irritability, headaches, maybe constipation), and you may feel hungry, but you shouldn’t feel weak, he adds. Learn how to cope with these and know that if you can power through the first 7-14 days, you’re golden.

Alternative medicine A period of voluntary abstinence from foods and/or drinks; fasting is integral to many religions, as it is believed to purify the mind and spirit; fasting rests the GI tract, and may rid the body of toxins and undigested metabolites; fasting leads to a loss of water, Na+, and K+, resulting in postural hypotension, and decreased blood sugar resulting in depression, fatigue, decreased libido, and malaise, increased nitrogen in the circulation due to protein breakdown, and may result in premature childbirth—Yom Kippur effect

In related news, recent research3 suggests drinking 500 ml (a little more than two eight-ounce glasses) of water half an hour before your meals may help boost weight loss. Obese participants who "pre-loaded" with water before each meal lost an average of nearly three pounds (close to 1.5 kilos) more than the control group over the course of three months.

Zero-calorie beverages are okay. I drink green tea in the morning for my caffeine kick while writing. If you want to drink water, black coffee, or tea during your fasted period, that’s okay. Remember, don’t overthink it – keep things simple! Dr. Rhonda Patrick over at FoundMyFitness believes that a fast should stop at the first consumption of anything other than water, so experiment yourself and see how your body responds.

Autophagy is spring cleaning for your cells. It’s Latin for “self-eating,” which is spot-on: when autophagy turns on, your cells sift through their internal parts, get rid of anything that’s damaged or old, and install shiny new versions.[8] Autophagy is like a tune-up for your car: afterward everything runs more smoothly. It reduces inflammation and even boosts longevity. Intermittent fasting triggers, to quote researchers, “profound” autophagy, especially in your brain.[9]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book The Cost of Discipleship, said, “Jesus takes it for granted that His disciples will observe the pious custom of fasting. Strict exercise of self-control is an essential feature of the Christian life. Such customs have only one purpose — to make the disciples more ready and cheerful to accomplish those things which God would have done.”
There are many studies documenting the benefits of fasting which include lowering the risk of type 2 diabetes, reducing cholesterol levels, enhancing the body’s resistance to oxidative stress (which is connected to aging and many chronic diseases), reducing inflammation (a key driver in many common diseases) and… weight loss! The weight loss benefit is how I first got introduced to Intermittent Fasting (or IF for short).
A healthy person who is not perspiring much can go without food and water for about three days before the body begins to be stressed. And a healthy person can go without food for several days if he is drinking water. Thus, the amazingly long 40-day fasts by Moses, Elijah and Jesus Christ (Deuteronomy 9:9 Deuteronomy 9:9When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant which the LORD made with you, then I stayed in the mount forty days and forty nights, I neither did eat bread nor drink water:

On my fasting days, I would wake up, have coffee, and start my day without any food. This would continue until about 5:30 p.m., when I would prepare a dinner that didn’t vary from my regular dinner in terms of either what or how much I ate. So, my fasting dinner would be something normal for me, like stir-fry, pasta, soup, sandwich, sushi, etc. This dinner looked like any other and occurred at the usual time. This made it simpler — I was just resuming eating with no special fanfare.

Alternative medicine A period of voluntary abstinence from foods and/or drinks; fasting is integral to many religions, as it is believed to purify the mind and spirit; fasting rests the GI tract, and may rid the body of toxins and undigested metabolites; fasting leads to a loss of water, Na+, and K+, resulting in postural hypotension, and decreased blood sugar resulting in depression, fatigue, decreased libido, and malaise, increased nitrogen in the circulation due to protein breakdown, and may result in premature childbirth—Yom Kippur effect
WHAT DO YOU THINK? - We have all sinned and deserve God's judgment. God, the Father, sent His only Son to satisfy that judgment for those who believe in Him. Jesus, the creator and eternal Son of God, who lived a sinless life, loves us so much that He died for our sins, taking the punishment that we deserve, was buried, and rose from the dead according to the Bible. If you truly believe and trust this in your heart, receiving Jesus alone as your Savior, declaring, "Jesus is Lord," you will be saved from judgment and spend eternity with God in heaven.
Another type of intermittent fasting, alternate day fasting has you severely restricting the amount of calories you eat during fasting days, then eating to your stomach’s content on non-fasting days. Food isn’t completely off the table, but you’ll stick to about 25 percent of your normal caloric intake. Someone eating 2,000 calories would cut back to 500, for example. Alternate-day fasting isn’t necessarily a long-term plan, because it can become difficult to stick to, but it can be helpful to get a healthy habit in motion.
^ Jacobs, Henry Eyster; Haas, John Augustus William (1899). The Lutheran Cyclopedia. Scribner. p. 110. By many Lutherans Good Friday is observed as a strict fast. The lessons on Ash Wednesday emphasize the proper idea of the fast. The Sundays in Lent receive their names from the first words of their Introits in the Latin service, Invocavit, Reminiscere, Oculi, Lcetare, Judica.
While not yet proven in humans, early studies in rats seem to link intermittent fasting with increased longevity. One study found that intermittent fasting decreased body weight and increased the life span in rats (6). Another found that a group of mice who fasted intermittently actually lived longer than the control group, although they were heavier than the non-fasting mice. (7) Of course, it’s not clear that the same results would happen in humans, but the signs are encouraging.
Methods of fasting also vary widely and cover a broad spectrum. If followed strictly, the person fasting does not partake any food or water from the previous day's sunset until 48 minutes after the following day's sunrise. Fasting can also mean limiting oneself to one meal during the day, abstaining from eating certain food types or eating only certain food types. In any case, the fasting person is not supposed to eat or even touch any animal products (i.e., meat, eggs) except dairy products. Amongst Hindus during fasting, starchy items such as Potatoes, Sago and Sweet potatoes are allowed. The other allowed food items include milk products, peanuts and fruits. It should be noted that peanuts and the starchy items mentioned above originate outside India.
While I am working in my office, I use my head phones to listen to worship songs or preachings from men of God that the Holy Spirit will lead me to listen too. That helps me to concentrate on my work and prevent me from having distractive conversation with my co-workers. To keep my self in God's presence I do the same while I am driving, listening to worship songs and teachings. I decided to not watching movies which I like to do and read my bible or books to remain encouraged.
Although it may be unfashionable, try to have dinner early and once you’ve finished your meal don’t eat anything and limit your drinking to water or tea. You’re just avoiding bedtime snacks and watching TV without nibbling so you’re not on a diet and since you’ll be sleeping for most of your fast you probably won’t be hungry. It should be a relatively painless way to see if intermittent fasting works for you.
The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates wrote, “To eat when you are sick, is to feed your illness”. Another ancient Greek writer and historian Plutarch is also credited with penning “Instead of using medicine, better fast today”. In more recent times one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, stated, “The best of all medicines is resting and fasting”.
Unger’s Bible Dictionary explains that the word fast in the Bible is from the Hebrew word sum, meaning “to cover” the mouth, or from the Greek word nesteuo , meaning “to abstain.” For spiritual purposes, it means to go without eating and drinking (Esther 4:16 Esther 4:16Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast you for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in to the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.
The other factors to consider with this diet are more concerned with your current weight. Lower calorie intake for most people will equal less fat. This is because, unless you’re a full-time athlete, most people do not need the number of calories they consume each day. They don’t burn that energy away, and as a result, it turns into fat. The 5:2 diet promotes lower calories on a weekly basis and high nutrient foods during the fasting days.
We are not to fast to have people feel sorry for us or to think we’re pious (Matthew 6:16-18 Matthew 6:16-18 16 Moreover when you fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear to men to fast. Truly I say to you, They have their reward. 17 But you, when you fast, anoint your head, and wash your face; 18 That you appear not to men to fast, but to your Father which is in secret: and your Father, which sees in secret, shall reward you openly.
Those who only pre-loaded once a day, or not at all, lost just over 1.75 pounds (0.8 kilos). In all, 27 percent of the treatment group who pre-loaded with water lost more than five percent of their body weight, compared to just five percent of the control group. This makes logical sense, as thirst is often misinterpreted as hunger. Drinking water before settling down to eat will also make you feel fuller, so overall this strategy could result in eating less.
On first fast days, people often expect to feel really hungry. But thought you will be aware of eating less, you’ll probably be surprised at how quickly any pangs pass, especially if you keep busy with work or other activities. On the first few fasts, some people report feeling the cold more, or experiencing headaches – both of these are common with all diets. Most people find it gets much easier after the first one of two fasts.
Martin Luther, founder of the Lutheran Churches, held that fasting served to "kill and subdue the pride and lust of the flesh".[63] As such, the Lutheran churches often emphasized voluntary fasting over collective fasting, though certain liturgical seasons and holy days were times for communal fasting and abstinence.[64][65] Certain Lutheran communities advocate fasting during designated times such as Lent,[37][66] especially on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.[39][37][67][68] A Handbook for the Discipline of Lent delineates the following Lutheran fasting guidelines:[69]